Asai Is the Red-Hot London Label Delivering Clothes in Chinese Takeout Boxes

A Sai Ta of the London-based label Asai has become a cult favorite around the Vogue offices for his Technicolor nylon tops and curve-hugging dresses, tie-dyed in nuclear greens or mustard yellow and reminiscent of saucy stained glass. And as an extra fun touch, he packages the scrunchable pieces in tiny Chinese takeout boxes. (Ta’s Instagram handle is @asaitakeway.) The casual delivery method is a part of Ta’s point of tapping into high and low lifestyles and also a way of understanding Asian culture, a constant theme in his work. (Ta grew up with a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese father.) “I like working with opposites. It is a complete opposite to how I create my clothes, which is really time-consuming and really more delicate than takeaway,” he says of the boxes. “I guess Chinese culture was understood initially in Western culture through food. They were able to cater the taste of the food to the Western audience.”

Ta’s mother, a seamstress, was also an influence. “My mom would bring back loads of clothes to sew. I would watch her, and she would give me some things to unpick,” says Ta. “I grew up with four sisters, so I was always surrounded by women, and I would see them go through their phases, like dressing up and going out.” Ta enrolled in Central Saint Martins in 2009, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, and was named first runner-up for the L’Oréal Creative Award for his graduation collection. (Fellow London label Wales Bonner was the winner.) In 2015, while studying for his master’s, Ta was scouted by Kanye West. “He came to my university and selected and interviewed a few people,” says Ta. “I was actually the year below the year he came to see, but the head of the program put me forward for it.” Ta worked about five months for West, and he honed in on his fabric-shredding techniques. Ultimately, Ta decided to create his own label, noting, “I always had my own vision to pursue.” He has been showing with Britain’s young designer showcase, Fashion East, since Fall 2017.

That vision comes down to mixing together worlds, with nods to privilege (a silver spoon jutting out from a model’s mouth) or sometimes stereotypical odes to Asian culture (a denim and suede purse made out of nunchucks). His Fall 2018 lookbook features models—some with heavy makeup and others who resemble avatars—hanging among piles of shattered glass and car remnants. The cars are a come-together moment of both Eastern and Western culture, an overarching symbol of power and “making it,” he says. One standout look is a blue avatar character—“an embodiment of a spiritual being of water and a play on blue China,” according to Ta—wearing chinoiserie-print cuissardes made to look like a “cliché of blue and white China,” with a peep toe to reveal a dragon-like angled nail, a reference to Vietnamese nail-salon culture. “It’s about taking something familiar and then making it more extreme—and then making it be something else,” he says. “You don’t know where it becomes or ends sometimes. I’m always creating things.”